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Recap of Jack’s storyline that goes way over the top trying to get the idea across that he’s really a good kid, despite being highly destructive and also emphasizes how boring and unnecessary he is. Good times. Then we get some recapping of Castiel’s death and rebirth, sans the awesome song from last week. Guess they couldn’t afford Steppenwolf two weeks in a row.

Cut to Now in Dodge City, KS, where Dean and an older cop named Sarge are roaming a graveyard at night with guns and flashlights, intently searching for something unseen and highly dangerous. Dean grumps that the MOTW is “messing with us” and goes ahead to “flush him out.” But instead, Sarge gets grabbed from belowground and disappears.

Cue title cards.

Gee, I wonder if we will get a lazy flashback – yup, we did. “48 Hours Earlier.”

Cue the sneak peek by the payphone, where Dean hugs Castiel (and then Sam does) and Castiel explains he was in the Empty. He assumes the Brothers somehow brought him back. Dean says that they didn’t even think they could do that. They bandy about the possibility that Chuck did it, but Castiel repeats the Empty entity’s claim that Chuck has no power there (which is crap, since Castiel’s been dead many times before and Chuck always brought him back). Sam then guesses it must have been Jack (bleah) and looks all proud.

So, they get back the Bunker and show him to Jack, who is thrilled at Castiel’s return and they hug. But Jack has no idea how he might have brought Castiel back. Jack then proudly shows them what he’s been up to in their absence. He’s learned how to levitate a pencil and geeks out over a case of a pocket watch that turned up at an antiques shop after having been buried with someone. He thinks zombies. Sam and Castiel are skeptical, but as son as Dean hears the case is in Dodge City, he’s all over going.

Once there, it turned out Dean got them the best room in the house, which includes photos of all sorts of outlaws (Dean geeks out over every one). A little worried, Jack comments that Dean sure loves cowboys and Castiel rather grimly agrees.

Later, Sam comments that Dean seems very happy, which is great considering how depressed he’s been (Saammmm, just let it goooooo), but he seems skeptical about something. Probably Castiel’s resurrection, since Dean is just willing to let that one go as a genuine win for once.

Meanwhile, a young cop is checking out an abandoned, stolen truck with the lights still on. He hears rustling in the corn and freaks out, but that doesn’t prevent his being dragged under the truck and eaten.

Back at the hotel, Sam and Dean are asleep, Dean snoring, while Jack (who doesn’t sleep much) and Castiel (who doesn’t sleep at all) talk about Heaven and how Jack’s mother must be there. Castiel goes on about what a saint she was (Show, she was a walking womb for Nephilim and *if* her soul still exists, it’s pretty unlikely the angels let it go to Heaven. Move on). Jack says he saw Kelly’s message for him and that he had an angel watching over him. Castiel tries to apologize for being dead and Jack talks a bit about how little he remembers being in the womb.

Castiel decides to venture into the territory of Kelly being convinced that Jack is going to turn the planet into a paradise. Because that’s always worked out so well in the past. [/sarcasm]

Jack gets a hit on whatever search he’s doing (presumably the young cop who just got eaten) and rushes off to wake up Dean, despite Castiel’s warnings. Dean wakes up yelling and wielding a gun. Once they calm him down, he demands coffee.

As Dean caffeinates, Castiel tells Jack, “I told you. He’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear.” Meanwhile, Sam is checking out Jack’s find. The young cop was found covered in “bite marks,” which could be all sorts of MOTWs. Sam says he’ll go to the graveyard with Jack, while Dean and Castiel go interview cops at the crime scene.

That morning, Dean and Castiel drive out to the crime scene. Dean is dressed to the nines, while Castiel is in his trenchcoat and a ten gallon hat. Dean geeks about “blending in.” I facepalm in second-hand embarrassment. Oh, yeah. This is going to be classic.

Anyhoo, they walk up to the scene, with Dean asking who’s in charge and Castiel doing a pretty terrible-yet-disturbingly-accurate impression of Nathan Lane’s impression of John Wayne in The Birdcage.

Dean introduces himself to “Sarge” from the teaser as “Agent Russell,” while Castiel introduces himself as “Val Kilmer.” Gotta give Sarge credit – he just rolls with it.

Turns out the dead cop was Sarge’s nephew and his throat got slit. He figures them for Texas Rangers. Apparently, this wasn’t the original cover, as Castiel begins to correct him, but Dean interrupts Castiel and goes along with the new ID. Sarge looks skeptical, but rolls with it.

Dean says they’re tracking someone across state lines who’s been robbing graves. Sarge says his nephew was looking into a local grave robber. His only warning to them is that if he catches the guy first, he’s taking him out personally. Dean looks like he can respect that.

In the morgue, the medical examiner is doing her autopsy while listening to The Bonecollectors’ “They Call Me Zombie.” Sam and Jack try to talk to her, but it takes a while. Actually, it turns out her name is “Athena” and she’s the undertaker.

She claims not to know much about the grave robbing, having been at a concert, and Jack makes things a bit awkward by asking odd questions about ghosts.

Outside in a graveyard, Jack sees a lot of EMF. Sam says that there usually is a lot of EMF in graveyards. The coroner apparently claimed rats got into the coffin, but it looks as though something busted out of the coffin from the inside, which Sam notices and comments on. Then Sam gropes under some dirt in the grave and finds a gnawed-on half of a pelvis.

Back at the hotel, the Brothers and Castiel concur it’s a ghoul. Castiel explains that you kill them by beheading (Dean, from gruesome, onscreen personal experience, adds, “Or bashing their brains in).

As Team Free Will 2.0 (Dean’s earlier designation) discusses who it could be, we get a quick flash of Athena. Both Castiel and Sam suggest it’s her, but Dean points out that she’s an undertaker. She already has access to the bodies. She doesn’t need to dig them up.

Jack then finds some traffic cam footage from not long (well … broad daylight) before the dead cop’s death and Dean recognizes the driver of the stolen vehicle. It’s Dave Mathers (who is, at that moment, slapping Athena on the butt and schmoozing her). Thing is, Dave Mathers was a gunslinger who died almost a century and a half ago.

Meanwhile, Athena has gotten a letter of acceptance into Carruth, where she could become a makeup and FX artist. But Dave isn’t happy because it’s in LA and would be expensive. As the show dances around the possibility that Athena is also a ghoul, she suggests she could sell the mortuary, which makes Dave unhappy.

Back at the hotel, TFW2.0 is discussing how a ghoul could eat a very dead gunslinger and Jack remembers he saw a photo in the morgue of Dave with Athena. They’re dating. Off all four of them go to the morgue/mortuary, where they try to explain to Athena what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Dave is robbing a bank.

As he exits the bank, Dean confronts him with a rifle. Sam, Castiel and Jack also come up. It turns out the ghoul likes to keep pieces of Dave around to “gnaw on.” Improbably, Dave survives the initial exchange of gunfire. Unfortunately, the security guard comes out to grab Dave at the same moment Jack decides to TK him, and the security guard is thrown into a pillar and dies. Castiel is unable to revive him.

Jack is devastated, while the others discuss that this was his first time killing someone (well … besides Dagon and his mother). Dean sends the three of them back to the Bunker with the intention of continuing the Hunt on his own.

Meanwhile, Athena is discovering Dave robbed the bank to help her get out of town, but also that he killed the cop. As things get ugly, they’re interrupted by car headlights. Both Sarge and Dean arrive. The bank teller ID’d Dave as Athena’s boyfriend.

After a brief discussion in which they both admit they’re vigilantes (and Dean tells Sarge how to kill him), we get the teaser scene all over again.

Dean is initially very hesitant about going into the tunnel after Sarge and the ghoul, but does so, anyway, grumbling all the way: “Come to Dodge City! Have some laughs!”

Random cut to the Impala, where Sam and Castiel try to cheer Jack up, Castiel by admitting he’s killed people who didn’t deserve it. He insists Jack can “do better,” that it’s not the end of the world.

Jack doesn’t want to hear it.

Dean arrives back in the mortuary by way of the tunnels. He finds Athena, tied up. He tells her her boyfriend isn’t human. He also finds Sarge. But maybe he’s one of them … nope. He’s still Dave. He comes up behind Dean and gets the drop on him.

He tells Athena he’s doing it for “us.” Athena just breaks up with him. Dean taunts him over it.

Dave gets mad and tells Dean he shouldn’t have come down armed (um … but Dean did) and that he’s “not fast enough.”

Dean says, “No … but he is.” And he steps aside for Sarge to blow Dave’s head off. Afterward, Dean gets Sarge to agree to blame the security guard’s death on Dave, too.

Back at the Bunker, Jack is still wallowing. He says that maybe he’s still “just another monster.” Dean says he doesn’t believe that, anymore. He says they’ve all done bad things (something Sam and Castiel also say).

Jack doesn’t really buy it. He thinks that he can’t do good things, no matter what he does, and that he cares about them too much to be around them and hurt them (or something). He then uses a burst of sparks to toss them across the room and (despite not having wings previously) flies away. Really, Show? Like this character wasn’t already ridiculously overpowered?

Credits.

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There has been a lot of discussion about the murderer at the Texas Church and the fact the Air Force never reported his crime of spousal abuse to the ATF. I was on SLATE.com (I think it was them, I am on a LOT of news sites; maybe it was thedailybeast.com) and there was a discussion of his ‘particular’ assault.

The fact was that strangulation is a much worse sign psychiatrically speaking; the author said that studies in which somebody hits or kicks or knocks the spouse down it is much lower on the abuse scale because strangulation is an attack which informs that the strangler has made commitment to a kill. It is a personal attack which shows commitment to end a life. When I read that I thought back to Sam choking out Dean in WTLB and the way he went about it. Paula, you have mentioned in the past how heinous Sam choking out his brother was but I never took it as ‘commitment to murder’ this way before. I thought it was a ‘dominance move’ but psychologically speaking it was much more than that.

Oh Paula, I wanted to say when I went to the library and tried to watch the show I first used Microsoft Edge and nothing came up; I asked the librarian for help and she switched it to Chrome and it all came up with absolutely no issues. Did you ever have an experience like that?

Anyway, it came up quite well and played quickly. I don’t ‘blame’ them for the commercials but there were 5-6 ads in each block and I got antsy because at home I just FF thru them all.

I just thought of something from the ‘previously’ and it made me happy: could they bring back Gabriel and Raphael TOO? Maybe Balthazar. And Samandiriel. I ‘think’ Misha was mimicking First Alastair from I Know What You Did Last Summer but laying it on a little thick, imitating Roylston doing Brando.

A very meh episode saved by Jensen’s performance. I liked Jack and Cas’ reaction to Dean’s fingerling the old West.
Jack teleported in the episode that Sam found him by the dumpster. He wanted to get away and the was away. At least it was strongly inplied.
I object to Jack being more powerful than Chuck. I object to a random cosmic entity that sleeps. And yes this was a serious LOL! Canon fail because Cas has resurrected twice in the show’starts history and more times than that per season 9… so much so that Cas refers to his bring on auto-resurrect as punishment.
Jack is a walking fire axe for testing a hole on the fabric of the universe bringing that bad Apocalypse here.

A very meh episode saved by Jensen’s performance. I liked Jack and Cas’ reaction to Dean’s fingerling the old West.
Jack teleported in the episode that Sam found him by the dumpster. He wanted to get away and the was away. At least it was strongly inplied.
I object to Jack being more powerful than Chuck. I object to a random cosmic entity that sleeps. And yes this was a serious LOL! Canon fail because Cas has resurrected twice in the show’starts history and more times than that per season 9… so much so that Cas refers to his bring on auto-resurrect as punishment.
Jack is a walking fire axe for crashing a hole into the fabric of the universe bringing that bad Apocalypse here.

Amara did not ‘know’ Death. The Entity of the Empty said God has not power in The Empty. We saw Castiel die in Swan Song but when his body exploded we did not see wings. The whole scene was confusing to me. I don’t have any way to explain how THIS particular resurrection happened.

I was glad to see that wasn’t just a reboot of Frontierland. The premise was actually kind of fun.

Sarge would make a credible hunter in his own right. I’d love to see him return. Dean seems to enjoy hunting with others even though he is perfectly capable of doing it alone, and he and Sarge worked well together. They “got” each other on a basic level.

I also do not like the way they do a ‘setting up’ scene at the beginning and then put “48 Hours Earlier” up and begin the episode. My episode link said the show was 41.30 min long but it was really 40min long. Is it a way to save money?

Eric Schweig was good, but when we got to the end and Dean and he met up at Athena’s Schweig sized Dean up REALLY good when he looked him in the eye and said he was not badged he was there to kill the man who murdered his nephew and Dean said, I ain’t taking him in either. “We” know Dean is there to kill a monster but Sarge is there to commit murder; I liked Sarge but a man who will kill for ‘good’ reason is inured to kill for a ‘bad’ reason In My Opinion. Dean hung out with a vigilante cop and got the favor of putting the dead security guy (I liked him, I liked the way he walked painfully because it just ‘fit’ for me, he made a little part stand out for me) on “Dave” and keeping Jack out of it.

Yeah, effective leader Dean. Why was everybody so exasperated about ‘cowboy’ lover Dean as opposed to ‘serial killer’ fanboy Sam getting a pass? And I was impressed with Dean’s control when he woke up like an angry bear. And I loved Sam just kind of rolling over bleary-eyed, going uh.

Athena sorta-kinda reminded me of Eva from Appt in Samarra thing going on. They mentioned Dr Robert a couple of times over the years. Liked the use of ‘non-classic rock’ music for Athena’s character and put it ‘on’ in a good way.

I could only get up to the second ad break to load (I don’t know why ads take so much more juice).

I liked Corrado-Lopez having them do things like carry their suits wrapped in plastic (she always has little touches like that and I guess that is directorial rather than authorial).

I liked Sarge and remember Eric Schweig from other shows. I thought he was bigger than he is (in contrast to ‘our’ actors) but he just looked large rather than huge. Athena reminded me of the never-brought-back Eva from Appointment in Samarra. OK and slightly snarky. “Dave” did look like “Mysterious Dave” to me.

I liked how Sarge just rolled with these two ‘odd’ Texas Rangers.

Sorry I did not see the end but I could see everything you wrote as flowing from what I saw.

I wish we knew what happened to Doctor Bob and Eva.

I am SO pleased the ratings went up. Lordie our show is the little engine that COULD.

“Dave” is playing Mysterious Dave Mather! A member of the Dodge City Gang in Las Vegas NM! A descendent of Cotton Mather! Worked for Hymen G Neill aka HOODOO (I love that name) Brown! Just kind of disappeared after his floruit!